Checkpoints:

sorry!

2003-12-04T14:25:15Z

Okay folks. Here's what's up. I havent updated this because I have been very busy working with this group: www.palhope.org (try www.palhope.net too they seem to have two provisional sites up at the moment) and I am also trying to get prometheusradio.org to send low power FM transmitters to a place called Jayyous, in Palestine. The best town ever, for pictures check palsolidarity.org.

I'll try to write something in here, anyway. I've been in the states, giving workshops and trying to get volunteers to go to Palestine. Anyone want to chat with me, try revaaltamira@hotmail.com for MSN chat, and I will give you updates verbally and answer any questions about my two week trip in September.

I have a cold today. :(

Differently Ignorant

2003-10-02T12:42:36Z

never mind about the stupid thing. I am not going to privatize it because, well, when I went into this I said it was gonna be 100% transparency and that's the way I am going to do it, dammit.

So, I don't know what it is I want to say about Palestine. It is an ordinary place full of ordinary people that watch music videos and pirate software for class and talk on their cell phones. They're pretty much just like us, although they do some stuff that is foreign to me as an American, of course.

The occupation is really, really bad. Imagine being stuck in Queens for your whole life, having lived in Long Island and never, ever being able to see Long Island for decades and decades. Except the standard of living is quite a lot lower than that of Queens.

People can't get to school. Curfews shut cities down for days, weeks, or months. Stray bullets, random terror from soldiers or settlers, and the checkpoints just fuck everything up hardcore. Nevertheless, the Palestinians are among the most civilized of oppressed peoples. Despite corruption in national and local administrations, Palestinians recieve among the highest marks for developing nations administering basic services.

They also have a broader global view than many Americans would expect from Arabs, especially Palestinians who are broadly caricatured as terrorists. (And no, blogging audience, I do not mean you, but the majority of people who depend on major news feeds are exposed to that view). As an American and a Jew I was asked many questions and asked lots in return. But I was always treated with respect and friendliness.

Bethlehem is almost completely peaceful, although there are periodic incursions, the best known being the month long curfew caused by the standoff at the Nativity church. Nablus is more active and there are frequent incursions by Israeli soldiers as well as aerial action, street battles, tanks, checkpoints, curfews, etc. But in my time in this bustling city there was no action of any type except for two orange flares in the air. There were shootings in the Balata camp,which is just by Nablus, and an English student I met was shot in the gut. But I was in a small village far away at the time.

There are two kinds of tourism I think are pretty cool and not silly. One is the kind Mr. Sagarmatha or whatever he is calling himself these days does. He goes and hikes up mountains and does all kinds of other things where he is seeing a place and really exploring himself, as well. The other kind is this Palestine trip, and a previous stay in Puerto Rico - to visit an interesting place where I can learn about a little bit of the world, and change my own perspectives a bit.

The rest of the world is often cited as more informed than we are. That is not necessarily true - in places in Palestine, education was so spotty that a guy
wasn't clear on where the Himalayas, or the United States, are. This was in the Balata refugee camp, and there was a map of Palestine on the wall, very detailed. Of course, I might find the same to be true in any American classroom, so, considering they have deep access to the Internet and global communications networks, Palestinians are merely differently ignorant than us.

Palestine is hot, and the plants there are desert plants and the culture is a desert culture. Their houses are often beautifully decorated, and even the poor have an Arab visual aesthetic that is opulent. For example, taxicabs are frequently adorned with gilted hangars on the rearview mirror and peacock feathers.

Oh, I have to get to work. More later.

i am back

2003-09-22T17:08:59Z

have been back in town in US for a week. the problem is, i dont want to do lots of updating on here if it's a public journal. my friends, would you jump through the required hoops if i privatized this journal and could give you vignettes, summary and updates?

well. here i am

2003-09-02T14:06:38Z

In Beit Sahour. I am completely exhausted. got in last night after spending the whole flight with a lot of kids going to young judea school, mostly modest but modish orthodox girls with doting be-yarmulka'd and wigg'd parents giving them hugs and pushing their year;s worth of luggage through the gates, then the kids spent the whole flight singing. GAH.

so then i get off the flight, wait a billion trillion years for my luggage etc. and what the hell ever, and find Zuher, the driver of cab. we go through checkpoint with no trouble at all etc. etc. and then we get here and it's like 8PM. Oh yeah, zuher got a flat and after much yabbering and attempts to fix it he calld the head of the place i am staying, alternative tourism group, and this guy, a very cute shaggy arty hippy named ayman, drives me to house of ramzi, from which i type this.

so had a nice dinner of fava beans and olive oil and tomato salad and pita, they are very pleased i like palestinian food. It's just like lebanese food which is the best food ever. Had interesting conversation with ramzi, his mom, his cousin Hassan, bunch of other relatives. Attended by petulant three year old girl as well. Passed out and woke up 630am and then at 830 went to Catholic school which let 60 kids stay out in sun all day yesterday because their 'rents hadn't paid school fees. well i would be one pissed off beeyotch if that happened to me i tell ya what, i'd be suing etc. parents here, includign hassan, were also very hopping mad.

the kids get all distracted by the crap on the news and this makes it hard for them to learn. this also holds true for grown up, chic college kids at bethlehem university.

got great photos of: apartheid wall beside har homa settlement that conveniently cuts off people from several hundred very old olive trees, house destroyed by rocket and then caught fire and firefighters shot, bullet holes all over church of Nativity which is a very stunning and ancient church, a palimpsest of crap from Pope Constantine to Justinian to Crusaders to Turks to modern tourist stuff. Boy is it pretty. there are a bunch of spiffy early christian crypts in the basement and the room where Heiro-whats-his-name translated the Bible into Latin for the first time.

Bethlehem got well wrecked by IDF during spring 2002 standoff. including the church. tanks at bethlehem univ. campus, 40 consecutive days of semi-curfew, bullet holes all over the church. the town is still rebuilding from this. How the hell nasty is that? Going to Hebron tomorrow and some refugee camps and maybe Nablus later in the week.

Moo.

Going

2003-08-30T16:15:01Z

Will be in Beit Sahour monday evening, God willing. Will update as I go.

Bear with me, o friends

2003-08-21T20:36:59Z

I am doing very well here, except being bloody fricking pissed off at Hamas and the IDF for acting like goddamned Jack Asses. I have lots of shit taken care of for the trip except lots of places i wont be able to travel to now. That's okay because I can talk to plenty of people who are being affected by the checkpoints and getting their schooling interrupted right now! What a crap time to get school interrupted. Imagine you are a new teacher, you've developed your curriculum and surprise! here's some sweaty 17 year old boys to smash your microscopes, graffito your wall with racial slurs, trash your office and just generally screw everything up. I may be mad at the slight inconveneince but think of what the Palestinians have to go through.

I am gonna have to likely navigate my own fanny through the checkpoints to Bethelem. Well it is the birthplace of Jesus and I am an American so I'd damn well better be able to get there. At which point I will get fine assistance from the Alternative Tourism Group (thanks Box in a Bank) and get well sorted doing what I do best - Interviewing People!

My boyfriend is evidently bringing home a stray half-wolf half-husky dog with one blue eye and one brown eye. What should I name said dog?

Many hugs and kisses,

Nuts Journo Person

Yucky anti-miscegenation law passed in Israel

2003-07-31T19:21:50Z

Newsday.com link here.

Lying in bed last night

2003-07-31T12:41:03Z

I think about the stuff I have done in the past and the stuff I am going to do. Arguments with a friend have expanded the story into a dual story, or maybe even four or five different stories. I'd like to compare whatever I see in Palestine etc. to a place in Michigan called Benton Harbor. It's much easier to find Palestinians on the 'net than it is to find African Americans from this very poor town on the net. The town has an unemployment rate similar to that of a refugee camp and is adjacent to a rich, small nearly-all-white town.

What does that mean? I've talked to bunches of Palestinian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Tunisian kids on various messenger services, just to talk to them. They act like other kids on IRC - testing out simple scripts and bots that declare their undying love for every person that enters a chat channel. In all of the profile searches on IRC homepages, Google groups, and MSN/YAHOO/ICQ/AIM membr searches I have conducted, I have not yet been able to find a current Benton Harbor resident in a live-chat environment.

Fascinating, as Spock would say.

NEW DIARY ENTRY

2003-07-24T16:48:19Z

so so so guess what?

LiveJournal pays off! I've met an excellent person in-country and he is just fabulous, sexy and brilliant. :))

I also got a donation of a digicam and am raising money for trip with a spiffy house party in my friend's spiffy house.

Furthermore, today I shall send emails off to various ministers and UN-persons in the education field in Palestine.

It is amazing how staggeringly easy it is to meet Palestinians on the web, IRC, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, and even AIM Instant Messenger. The place is well-noded compared to what my assumptions were. However the whole point of this is to learn instead of to assume.

Woo yay!!!!

Sorry for belated entry

2003-07-15T17:11:23Z

I am busy with logistical details and must be circumspect about them in a public forum. Hell, less than ten people read this fucker anyway.

How are all you people? If you read this, please post and say hello. I don't know anyting that's going on.

Yawn....

2003-07-07T14:30:03Z

That is all.

AIM

2003-07-02T01:11:08Z

Oh boy am I burnt. Software training all fucking the last three weeks, dammit, of people who work at another firm. Assholes abound. I don't give a shit, I am making money for my trip. The asshole is duly ignored with a thought that petty bullshit is irrelevant. I don't care about them enough to get involved. I can easily imagine various horrible things happening to any given asshole.

AIM / Yahoo / MSN as combined in Trillian rocks. It's my message center for friends, family and a growing cadre of Middle Easterners who are on the Internet and post a yahoo or hotmail address. Meeting ordinary folks who are there and part of the environment of ordinariness is the essence of my approach to journalism. I do not need anybody to give me a story, the whole world is a story. There are interesting stories everywhere - you can follow individuals, or a community of individuals. It's sociological in nature, but not dry like fucking sociology texts.

At least this is what I hope.

Incursions continue every day all over the Occupied Territories. They are thinly reported in the West and I get my news about them from individual primary sources emailing my newsgroups and various Yahoo-lists on the topic daily. God bless the Internet. I am truly blessed to have all these resources.

Wickedness and the mainstream

2003-06-26T00:01:40Z

I have very unrealistic views of social relationships, I am told. This is because I try to form my friendships around common efforts such as the common effort between me and my partner to have a loving, growing relationship. This friendship is prime and central and is the most filled with difference and contradiction. I have friendships with people who are more like me that also have a creative and productive energy. I also have many of what most people call friends - drinking buddies, verbal and digital sparring partners, old lovers and workmates and oddballs of all sorts.

But the most important are those friendships of effort - like the friendships between a few families to rule the United States, or the friendship between Turing and Waterhouse in Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I will not leave this earth without attempting at least a few of my ridiculous ideas.

The reengineering of friendships into commodity-consumption meetings is an aspect of wickedness. The gossip and challenge of teenagers and young adults is natural, but it should not be central. Your real friends are likely people you would never invite to your house, the people that make your life possible, protect you and look out for you.

The wickedness of modern friendship is a wickedness of freedom - but a negative, bland, sucking freedom, a freedom like a black hole that obliterates a structure and leaves nothing in its place. Friendship without obligation and purpose and practice has led to each of us devaluing our friends. That's why we leave them so often to find a new means of support.

Right now this is a Western phenomenon.

Other cultures find a new means of support together. Their diaspora (with the exception of many technology workers brought in under H1B visas) is largely communal. When they scatter, emigrate for economic reasons, they bring their families and entire villages to the United States. Vast swaths of Midwestern states like Kentucky and Illinois have Mexican towns in them, often arrayed in the same social pattern with the same churches, clubs, and political institutions. The corresponding towns in Mexico are supported entirely by their remittances but are increasingly ghost towns.

We don't have the desire to stay put. Really, we never have. Americans are willing to move and to fight and increase productivity in the face of innumerable exploitations. We'll happily sell our own asses down the river, just like everybody else. But we're not willing to move to where the jobs are going! Our own racism will fuck us in the end.

Negotiations

2003-06-20T12:32:43Z

Pray for them. As I write there was just another attack in Israel.

I am very busy today and have a lot to say and it all seems rather self obsessed right now. I am so young and stupid and don't know jack squat. Pray for me, too.

I'll be praying for all of you!

The Apartheid Wall

2003-06-15T15:33:17Z

Where do you look and see a situation from? That will determine what you see.

I get these reports from individuals living in Palestinian towns whp are experienced in conveying the life of the town and how it's disrupted to an American who is limited in the amount of honest, nonpartisan press from Palestine that she sees.

It's just about the life of a town, the economic and social life and the basic breath of a town, an atmosphere that can change radically. It's the kind of report that can be conveyed in a movie - its a universal kind of report that does not have any particular racial, nationalistic or political cast. It just talks.

Here is one in its entirety about a theft of land:

IWPS Report No. 34
Latest land theft is killing us slowly
report on Deir Ballut and Marda villages
9th June 2003

The completion of the first phase of the Apartheid Wall led to the confiscation of 16 villages in the West Bank. During this period, the Yesha Council or
settlers lobby group, demanded the wall be extended further inside the West Bank, to incorporate the settlements into Israel. This led to the projection of a map where it is not clear for a number of villages if they will be inside Palestine, or annexed into Israel, or trapped between two walls in a "ghost limbo land".

Two of these villages are Deir Ballut and Marda, both in the Salfit Governorate. Deir Ballut is an extremely fertile area, with large tracts of
waterlogged land being used as the main growth area for summer crops for the entire Salfit region. The village of 3750 people own 120 000 dunums of land,
much more than any other village in the area. About 70% of the land is cultivated with olive trees. Another 20 000 dunums were lost by Deir Ballut in
1948, land that now belongs to Roshaim. About another 1700 Deir Ballut residents reside abroad (of which about 1000 still have a Palestinian ID).

After Oslo, only the village of Deir Ballut plus 150 dunums of land were left in area A. All the rest was put under Israeli control. One of Deir Ballut's problems is that it is quite cut off from other Palestinian centers. The closest Hospital is in Ramallah, and there are two big check points between Deir Ballut and Ramallah. The checkpoint at Deir Ballut Junction has been there for 15 years, all through the Oslo years!

Despite the disruption to freedom of movement, Deir Ballut residents managed to survive through a system whereby the men worked in Israel and the women farmed the 150 dunnums of land with alternate seasons of summer crops (onions, cucumbers, tomatoes) and winter crops (wheat), and worked producing olive oil. A busy market existed on the road to Ramallah where commuters from all the
neighbouring villages would buy vegetables daily.

This kind of survival system has been totally smashed recently by the intensified occupation. On 29th May 2003, the Israeli Occupation Forces dumped
concrete blocks in the junction between Deir Ballut and Ramallah, erecting a concrete watchtower. The only other way for Deir Ballut residents to get to
Ramallah is to drive for 20 minutes on dirt roads through the fields and then enter the checkpoint from the east side of the junction. The Israeli Occupation Forces have installed a metal gate across the road on the east side of the junction, so even this is not a reliable way to get to Ramallah.

The concrete blocks and the gate mean that cars from Deir Ballut carrying fresh produce can rarely leave the village. The soldiers hold the only key to the gate. In other villages, like Karawa, gates have been installed only to be permanently shut just days later, opened only to let the Israeli Occupation Forces into the Palestinian villages.

There are no more commuters coming through and the market no longer exists. Before, three kilograms of cucumbers could be sold for 10 shekels and now they
fetch only five shekels ^Ö and this price is dropping almost daily. Desperate Deir Ballut villagers tell of how they had to feed cucumbers to their donkeys after having no way to sell them.
Um Ammar is fast becoming one of those desperate villagers who struggles to put food on the table. Um Ammar's husband died when the oldest of their four sons was only eleven years old. She had to raise the children alone, and support them off the proceeds of the winter wheat harvest and the 12 dunums* of olive trees. Things became easier when the boys became men and got jobs in Israel. With the closure, all four sons lost their jobs. The 4000 ^Ö 5000 shekels every year that the winter crop brought in was ^Ñbonus money^Ò according to the family. For the first time this year Um Ammar had to plant summer crops on the only two dunnums of crop land that the family owns. The produce of these two dunnums are virtually all the family has to survive off, a yearly income of 4000 shekels being the monthly minimum wage for a construction worker ^Ö clearly an impossible task. Their present poverty situation and the spectre of the wall are currently haunting the villagers of Deir Ballut. To tar the dirt road through the fields will cost the village 10 000 US dollars which they don^Òt have. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee can only provide the tar, 30% of the total cost.
There are also five houses trapped on the other side of the checkpoint, totally cut off from the village. They are within arms reach of the heavily armed checkpoint, which is bad enough but what is worse is that Israeli soldiers took all the identity numbers of the residents and told them that ^Óafter a certain period^Ô they would not be able to get into Deir Ballut without special
permission.

Most of the second phase of the wall has been communicated in this type of vague language to villagers. A rumour is circulating in Deir Ballut that ^Ñan Israeli guy^Ò told a worker at the Palestinian Ministry of Interior that he ^Ñshould be ready to cancel 40 000 Palestinian identity cards because we want to issue those Palestinians with Israeli cards.^Ò

^ÓWe live in a situation where you cannot know which is the rumour and which is the truth,^Ô said Land Defence Committee activist Riziq Abu-Nasser.

What is not a rumour is that on March 25th, the Mayor of Deir Ballut received a visit from Robert Weller and Jeffrey Place, of the US State Department (American Consulate in Jerusalem). They told the Mayor that they had read an article about the Apartheid Wall and they asked if the village would be prepared to be annexed into Israel. The village flatly refused. But the new heckpoint, and the erection of the concrete watchtower at Deir Ballut junction, the same kind of watchtower as the ones erected along the length of the completed eight metre high wall in Qalqilya, makes the villagers think that their annexation may be a done deal.

News about the visit of the state department to Deir Ballut reached Marda village only two months later! On the night of 28th May, Marda villagers
arrived at the home of local activist Abed Baset-Said in a panic, saying they had heard that Israeli soldiers had arrived in Deir Ballut to inform the
Palestinians that they would all soon be getting Israeli identity cards.

Marda villagers immediately wondered if they would face the same fate. As the Palestinian village closest to Ariel, the second largest settlement in the West Bank, Marda lies in the shadow of Ariel which has been built along the top of the hill. The highway built for Ariel and Tapuach settlers to get to Tel Aviv, Highway 5, runs directly below Marda. The map of the Apartheid Wall produced by the Land Research Centre shows that the wall will include Ariel into Israel. At the same time, there is massive bulldozing going on across the road from Marda. This seems to indicate that Marda will be incorporated into Israel, along with Ariel and the settler highway.

This is the same settler highway which stole 3000 dunums of land from Azzawiya village when it was built. Azzawiya residents work in Ramallah and told IWPS that since the Deir Ballut junction checkpoint was set up, they have difficulties in getting to work.

Marda villagers have not been informed what will happen to them. ^ÓSome say the bulldozing is a new road directly to Jordan, while others say it is going to be a high speed railway line. Maybe it^Òs for the wall^Åwe don^Òt know what Israel is planning,^Ô said Abed.

^ÓOur future is not clear. Ariel has expanded and is now a city. It won^Òt be dismantled. Already they have stolen one of our three springs, and they dump their garbage and sewage water into our village. As Marda residents, we can^Òt see ourselves becoming part of Ariel or existing well inside Israel. This part is confusing us because normally Israel doesn^Òt want any Palestinians inside it yet now they want to incorporate the whole village,^Ô said Abed.

^ÓOur lands and homes are here. The bulldozing (50 metres wide and three kilometers long so far, the right measurements for the wall) has already
resulted in the loss of 300 dunnums of our land. The owner of this land brought a court case but the ruling was that this was a military decision.^Ô

Of course, we will refuse to be confiscated but we need international support to resist,^Ô Abed adds. ^ÓOur experience with the Israeli soldiers is that they will kill us in cold blood. Four years ago, we had a demonstration of hundreds of Palestinians against the theft of land in Kufr Dik. The police and army shot us, beat us with guns and rocks, and arrested ten of us. We were only released in one piece because journalists from the mass media were at the police station demanding our release.^Ô

In these villages where the future is unclear, there is a strange atmosphere of anger from the villagers that yet more of their land is being stolen mixed with disgust that the world expects them to quietly accept being killed off slowly,
the desire to resist mixed with a sense of futility. ^ÓIn 1948, many villages were divided and families torn apart so there is nothing new about Israel splitting villages up again with this Apartheid Wall,^Ô said Abed.

Nawaf Souf, the District C Liasion Officer for Salfit says that ^ÓFor those Palestinians living in the houses of Deir Ballut which are trapped by the
checkpoint, its like living in a jail. We are forced to leave sick people lying on the road at the checkpoint next to the concrete blocks because our ambulances can^Òt pass through ^Ö they are not planes! We know that our blood will bleed. The situation is leading to more and more stress on the Palestinian citizen. We just can^Òt move around anywhere. And these concrete blocks and this bulldozing might be the wall. If so, it is really the end of us.

Text by: Laura, Anna>

To hell, to hell, to hell, to hell! We're going to hell!

2003-06-12T12:55:20Z

I wrote a song last night reflecting the fact that we are going to hell in a handbasket. It's upbead with depressing lyrics, much like a Smiths song. The title is the "vamp" or end of the song, which is sung by two or three voices in a congenial arrangement.

I do believe in hell and in God in a personal way. The only thing to pray for is for God's will to be done. This is something that takes place on the level of the individual. In extreme cases it can cause retirement from the world, a person can retreat to inaction and leave everything to God.

But God is not like that at all. He likes to work through secondary agents; namely, us. That's why he puts out a list of rules for us to follow and encourages us to gather in communities of faith.

You pray for God to get into your head and re-arrange your priorities. Then as long as you are prayerful and get continuous feedback from ethical and spiritual sources, you should go forward with your worldly works in the hope that they are congenial to God's will.

With regards to myself this process is still fragmentary. I still am full of doubt - are my wishes my own, or are they to further God's values? Note: this is not evangelism of any sort, but simply the guidelines which I consider for every aspect of my worldly behavior. My actions at work, towards my loved ones, and in the world at large should reflect well on me and on God.

Please post below any thoughts or suggestions or flames on this issue!

Helicopter

2003-06-10T21:10:33Z

Well here's another blog entry. This one's written in Notebook. I shall not open a web browser unless I need a particular link, and I shall try to do that once at the end, so I don't get distracted following some hyperlinks off to nowhere and never updating my blog at all.

I'm reading an interesting book focusing on the "post-Oslo" era of negotiations and the contrast between the realities on the ground and the language used by both sides in the negotiation process. It's called "Israel/Palestine: How to end the war of 1948" and it's by a veteran Israeli reporter, Tanya Reinhart.

I hope to get to know the book well and to use it and other sources as a ready reference in the numerous Israel-Palestine arguments I get sucked into these days. In the past three years I've had to dumb down arguments about Palestine: Arabs are not all terrorists, Arab children learn math and science and literature in school, not suicide bombing. Palestinians are not nomads in the desert. Arafat is Mister Rogers compared to the alternatives presented in Hamas, etc. And so on. Before I can get into the intimate details of the series of peace negotiations I first must remind some individuals that the Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims in general, are people.

There are highly informed people everywhere, though, even in the United States, and these arguments are useful to me because they help me clarify how ignorant I am. The process of study involves examining formal writing and the informal narratives of people I know and people who have written in the past. I am experimenting with ways of organizing my thoughts and my own understandings into an intelligible sequence. These ways involve notebooks, etc. I can map my ignorance, my knowledge, my aims and my desires.

One major logistical aspect of this journey is to win the support of friends and loved ones. My boyfriend, for instance, has a deal with me: I am allowed to go to Palestine (and he's coming to with some spiffy camera skills) if he is allowed to build his helicopter.

He is building the G-1 helicopter from Vortech. The plans are detailed and impressive and come with a flight manual (he'll also be taking classes). He's currently fabricating the frame out of basic metal parts from a machine shop. He has his own little shop w/drills, drill press, a thing called a "Tig welder" and other stuff.

Apologies for the bad formatting last post.

2003-06-07T23:20:59Z

I am still learning to use this software.

Planning for my upcoming trip to Palestine has several distinct aspects. I must pay attention to each of them with care so I can, in my half-assed, unskilled way, learn as much as I can and shape the eventual outcome according to my will. What do I want to say? How do I want to say it? Who do I want to hear it? How do my method and my eventual goal reflect my values? And, most importantly, how can I compromise these lofty ideals with the real world?

That last question is the doozy. At best, the reporter should submit to the story. But the story is just that, a story. It's not the truth or anything. Truth, or rather proof, involves scientific method and statistics. It is a story that I came up with in my head. I am telling a particular narrative, not writing a massive tome on the sociopolitical nuts and bolts of Palestine. What's more, my narrative serves no pure Platonic virtue. It serves an artistic purpose - perhaps it fills one of the classic tropes which are drilled lifelessly into our heads by English teachers, and are brought to life so well by the greatest novelists. Perhaps it uses great instances of metaphor to capture a real event. Perhaps it falls flat on its ass, a limp piece of forgettable prose.

It also serves a political purpose - my own purpose. Any social-justice news story, not to mention the greatest acts of voluntary philanthropy, reflect these selfish ends. No reporter is ever objective. Objectivity makes bad art.

Notice I am talking about me, not about the plight of the people in Palestine. I care fanatically about their plight. There are few more spit upon groups of refugees and occupied peoples on earth. My concern has picked me up like a mama cat and set me down in a new environment that I am just beginning to explore. But I'm not primarily going to talk about them yet, because here I am talking more about method and practice. This is not a soap box! The worst and best of blogs get up on their high horse, and that's all well and good. I tried to launch a community blog as an aesthetic soapbox, and it fell flat on its ass.

I won't be talking about my contacts in this blog in any way that can identify them unless they say it's okay, and if they do I'm probably gonna save them for the artcles themselves. But when I get there I will definitely be bringing unedited voices to you.

My boyfriend is, as of now, planning to accompany me to Palestine. He is not doing any of the work but it will be an advantage to have him along on the ground. He is a useful guy in a conflict situation, very calm when required, and a good photographer. It is making my logistical planning a lot harder. Specific data on my logistics will follow in future journal entries.

Welcome

2003-06-07T01:19:41Z

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle the planning and execution of my upcoming trip to Palestine. The blog will not likely be interesting to read until I get in the swing of doing it. It's very easy for me to develop a fictional character and portray her on a community weblog, but it is not easy to be deadly serious and myself in public.

In any case, welcome and blessings. You, my audience, are the customers of this publication.

I am a writer my early twenties with a day job at a nonprofit. I'm a girl with a long term boyfriend. I am ethnically and culturally Jewish, but lately I am drawn to the black Baptist Christians who I am hanging out with in my gospel choir. I hate bullshit. If you would like to know my name, feel free to strike up a conversation with me at this forum and via e-mail and I'll likely share it and anything else you want to know.

I am going to Palestine as a moderately-experienced reporter. My interest in traveling there was seeded by Joe Sacco's graphic/comic documentary Palestine and solidified by the death of Rachel Corrie." The trip is not for activism, as was hers, but neither is it for the cold commentary of someone like Linda Gradstein. This is not war correspondence or direct action. Instead it is, like Joe Sacco's report, an open ended inquiry into ordinary lives.

It is all too common to see Palestinians, or any refugees, or any Arabs, as caricatures. This is the fault of the press as a whole, which presents very selective images of these groups. Very rarely are urban Arabs portrayed doing things other than looting or rioting in the streets; young Arab terrorists are featured prominently, rather than young physicists and poets.

This is to my advantage because the world of ordinary life, of school, family life and healthcare, work and saving money, aesthetics and entertainment, is a largely unreported one. My initial plan is to track the rise and fall of Internet infrastructure in Palestine, and to report on a few of the individual lives and educations that have been affected. In the late 1990s many Internet charities came into Palestine, but most left when the intifada flared up there again. There is a vibrant Internet culture in Palestine but their very bandwidth comes through, and is monitored by, Israel. Colleges and universities and secondary schools where computer science and basic computer literacy are taught have been ransacked, smashed, and shut down by Israeli authorities over and over again.

I am rapidly establishing contacts in many areas of Palestine and Israel. I am also raising money for the trip and attempting to get committments from editors to consider multiple pieces for publication.